The Regime and Boko Haram: What This Hashtag Business is Really All About

RUSH: I have become the villain in the kidnapped girls story. Your host, harmless, lovable, little fuzzball, El Rushbo. I'm the villain because I'm not joining the groupthink on this silly hashtag business. I'm a holdout for actually doing something. You know, did Reagan put a hashtag up saying "Gorbachev, tear down this wall," #walldown? No. Did McCarthy use a hashtag, #Japanese, #surrendernoworelse? No. It took action.

Anyway, there's a couple things on the hashtag story. One of them is in FrontPage magazine, which is David Horowitz's website, and this guy's theory, you think I'm a villain, wait 'til you hear this guy's theory on this whole story of Boko Haram and the Nigerian government and Obama and Hillary.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The #SaveOurGirls hashtag. I have become the villain in this story. I am more responsible for whatever's happened here than Boko Haram is. They are the kidnappers. They are the mean people. They are the bad people. They are the ones who kidnapped about 300 girls and converted 150 of them -- maybe all of them -- to Islam, and I have become the villain because I just refuse to join the media groupthink on this.

So I have here a couple of stories, one of them from Daniel Greenfield at David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine. I just want to read you a pull quote from this piece. The other piece, by the way, is in the Wall Street Journal, and the headline is: "A Selfie-Taking, Hashtaging, Teenage Administration."

So, you see, I am not the only one who thinks that hashtags are meaningless when it comes to genuinely dealing with a problem or solving it. George Will even said this, but he's not villain looking or acting, so they ignore his opinion. But this Daniel Greenfield piece: "Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton haven’t championed #BringBackOurGirls because it’s a hashtag in support of the kidnapped girls..."

No, no, no. "Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton haven't championed #BringBackOurGirls because it's a hashtag in support of the kidnapped girls, but because it undermines the Nigerian government." I want you to brace yourselves for this guy's opinion, Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage Magazine. Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, all of them, "aren’t trying to help the kidnapped girls.

"They're trying to bring down a government that hasn’t gone along with their agenda for appeasing Boko Haram and Nigerian Muslims. The hashtag politics aren’t aimed at the terrorists." Now, the rank-and-file, the low-information people -- average, ordinary Americans -- on social media, this guy's opinion is not about them.

If you're just Joe Q. Six-Pack and you're getting behind it, fine and dandy. You're doing a show and you care about the issue. But the leaders, the organizers, the people that are prominent, this guy's opinion is: "The hashtag politics aren't aimed at the terrorists. They're aimed at helping the terrorists." He says, "There's a reason why the media and so many leftists have embraced the hashtag.

"#BringBackOurGirls isn't a rescue. It denounces the Nigerian government for not having already gotten the job done even as the State Department stands ready to denounce any human rights violations during a rescue attempt. Obama and Boko Haram want to bring down the Nigerian government and replace it with a leadership that is more amenable to appeasement.

"It's the same thing that is happening in Israel and Egypt." So let me translate. Mr. Greenfield is saying here that the reason that the Regime and Hillary and Michelle Obama and Barack are getting behind the hashtag movement is because they want governments that will tolerate and appease militant Islam. Such is the fear of terrorism.

Such is the fear of what militant Islam can do that the going theory is, "If we're just nice to 'em, if we don't provoke them, if we show them we mean them no harm, they won't do anything to us." Don't misunderstand. He's not saying that Michelle Obama and Barack Obama are sympathetic to militant Islam. He's saying they're scared to death of them, and any government that doesn't appease them is making them more dangerous

So we've got to appease them. That's why we've got to condemn this practically nonexistent video for what happened in Benghazi and Cairo. He's making the point here that there's just total fear and that appeasement is the only way -- and, by the way, he's right in terms of the way the left deals with enemies. The left doesn't take 'em on. The left appeases them.

The message is, "Look, we don't hate you!" Look what they did after 9/11. What'd the State Department do? This was the Bush State Department! They had a forum on why do the terrorists hate us. What did we do to make them do this? So there's this belief that we are causing this. There's also a belief that Boko Haram exists because a government is unfriendly to them and is trying to oppress them, rather than be nice to them and accept them.

It's the government of Nigeria's fault here, and if we could just get rid of that government, get a government in there that appeases, then they'll stop kidnapping girls. That's this guy's opinion. He says, "This isn't just their strategy for Nigeria. It's their universal approach to Islamic terrorism. It's why [John] Kerry," who, by the way, served in Vietnam, "blamed Israel for the collapse of the peace talks with the PLO.

"It's why Egypt is being pressured to free its Muslim Brotherhood detainees. And It's why the United States is never allowed to defeat Al Qaeda." I'm reading quotes from this piece at FrontPage Magazine. "Obama is trying to bring down governments that fight Islamic terrorism, whether in Egypt, Israel or Nigeria, and replace them with governments that appease terrorists.

"This shared goal creates an alliance, direct or indirect, open or covert, between Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and the PLO and Obama and Boko Haram." Now, let's stop for a second. Obama and the PLO versus Israel. Who is Obama and Kerry sympathetic to? The PLO.

The Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt (or was) because of Obama. Now the theory is that Boko Haram, they're not the bad guys. The Nigerian government is, and the purpose of the hashtag is aimed at destabilizing the Nigerian government because they're not properly appeasement oriented toward Boko Haram or all of militant Islam.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, look. What you just heard may be hard to believe, but ask yourself: Why didn't Obama and Hillary do anything about Boko Haram when they had a chance? Why did they not call it a terrorist group? Daniel Greenfield's theory is they resisted doing anything about Boko Haram because they believe that Boko Haram exists because of the oppression of Muslims by the Nigerian government. They think the Nigerian government is to blame for them and has to be gotten rid of.

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RUSH: I imagine some of you are going, "What? What? What? Obama and Hillary and Michelle what?" Let me further explain this. This is all a takeoff on this hashtag business. The people that are writing about this are upset that the hashtag is sufficing for foreign policy. Even The Economist magazine is raising questions. They're a famously leftist UK, European magazine. What would the US fight for? What would the US defend, is the question that they're asking.

And here in the Wall Street Journal, Eliot Cohen with an op-ed piece: "A Selfie-Taking, Hashtagging Teenage Administration -- The Obama crowd too often responds to critics and to world affairs like self-absorbed adolescents." They act like teenagers. But the problem is that it infects both sides of the aisle. Let me just give you a little bit of what Cohen has written here.

"As American foreign policy continues its long string of failures -- not a series of singles and doubles, as President Obama asserted in a recent news conference, but rather season upon season of fouls and strikes -- the question becomes: Why?" And, by the way, speaking of that, when is the last time that you ever heard an American president ask for accolades? "Yeah, we're hitting a lot of singles here in foreign policy, maybe a double here and there." I mean, the expectations are so low, the sights are so low, our ambition, nonexistent.

And then Cohen writes, "Why does the Economist magazine put a tethered eagle on its cover, with the plaintive question, 'What would America fight for?' Why do Washington Post columnists sympathetic to the administration write pieces like one last week headlined, 'Obama tends to create his own foreign policy headaches'?"

And let's go to the New York Times. If what Daniel Greenfield has written today at FrontPage Magazine kind of surprises you, Greenfield points out in his piece that the media has taken the same position Obama has on this. This Boko Haram group has been around for years, and for years there have been requests to put them on our official terror designation list, and the Regime refused to do so. Hillary wouldn't do it, John Kerry wouldn't do it, but Israel is on the way to becoming an apartheid state, John Kerry says in private and when it leaks out he tries to walk it back.

"Two years ago the New York Times ran an op-ed titled, 'In Nigeria, Boko Haram Is Not the Problem.'" Two years ago. And Greenfield, FrontPage magazine notes: "The op-ed contended that Boko Haram didn’t exist, that it was a peaceful splinter group and that the Nigerian army was worse than Boko Haram. ... The editorial warned the US not to give the impression that it supports Nigeria’s Christian president or it would infuriate Muslims and suggested that Christians might really be behind the Muslim terror attacks."

That's the New York Times. If all you know is that the Nigerian government is Christian and that the Regime blames them for the existence of Boko Haram, because this Christian government does not appease Islamists in the country, that Boko Haram came into existence as a militant group, as a terror group because of a Christian government in Nigeria, then you know and have some context in understanding what Daniel Greenfield is saying here. Which, again, is that the hashtag politics isn't aimed at the terrorists; it's aimed at helping them.

The Regime, Hillary, Michelle Obama sympathize with Boko Haram. They're blaming the Christian Nigerian government for creating Boko Haram, and they want to get rid of the Nigerian government, because if you do that, if you appease the terror group by getting rid of the group you think is responsible for their existence, then you've made peace with them. You've made friends with them and they'll leave us alone, or whatever convoluted thinking. I'm sorry, my ability to comprehend liberalism only goes so far.

But you've got the New York Times saying the same thing the Regime did, and furthermore, there's another thing to bear in mind. MoveOn.org had a petition on its site that it's now trying to distance itself from. MoveOn.org, which is a Hillary group, it's a big leftist group, opposing the US designation of Boko Haram as a terror organization. Same position as Hillary's State Department. And the reason is that these leftists at Move On were concerned that a terrorist designation would encourage the Nigerian government to take repressive action, i.e., use the designation that they are a terrorist organization as a pretext for cracking down on all Muslims, not just Boko Haram.

MoveOn.org didn't want that, which means that Hillary didn't want it, 'cause they're just following her, which means that Obama didn't want it. Everybody, if you just stop and be honest with yourself, you have to admit that this administration's gone out of its way to appease militant Islam every which way it can. I know you're thinking, "Well, what about bin Laden?" They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into getting bin Laden, if I recall right. There were many opportunities beforehand. But that was a preelection domestic political move, as much with everything with Obama is.

The only point being made here by the Wall Street Journal and the guy at FrontPage Magazine, Greenfield, is that the real enemy -- and this is not public. Nobody knows. The people on Twitter that are all behind the hashtag have no clue what's going on here. They think they're really getting behind the kidnapped girls and that they're really helping and that they're really showing the world that they care and they're really causing worldwide action to take place, and they're being encouraged to think that.

They're being encouraged to think that simply caring can cause positive action. That's another misdirection that I think people's minds are being polluted with, that simply sitting there with a hashtag can cause a problem like this to be solved, and that's gonna be the end of the day. You wait. When this eventually is dealt with, and it's gonna be, because we do have some drones, we do have some aircraft trying to find the girls. They're gonna get found at some point; you know this is gonna end at some point, and that hashtag is gonna be given credit. And the end result is gonna be that all these people that got behind the hashtag who did nothing but retweet it are gonna think that that solved the problem. And who does that serve?

Again, let's just live in a false, pretend world. This is a world, folks, that has always been governed by the aggressive use of force. (interruption) Of course it is. Some kind of force. Let's ask this. Let's say that somehow by hook or by crook that we are able to get the Nigerian government to resign or take 'em out or whatever. Would Boko Haram give up the girls? Well, we don't know. We don't know. But if that happened, that would be action, that would be the use of force. I mean, they're not gonna leave on their own. The girls are not gonna be given up. Boko Haram is just not gonna say, "Oh, okay, okay, we were just kidding. Here they are." Isn't gonna happen.

We're already using force. We're flying warplanes over Nigeria and other search aircraft trying to find them. The use of force is underway. As the mayor of Realville, it's just frustrating, folks. The bottom line here, you have a Christian government that Obama and Hillary blame for the existence of Boko Haram. The Christian government harassed Muslims, this is the theory. The Christian government of Nigeria made it uncomfortable and therefore they could not designate Boko Haram as a terror group because that would be siding with the Christian government in Nigeria, and there was no way that that was gonna happen.

This Regime is not gonna side with the Christian government in Nigeria with Boko Haram on the other side when this Regime blames the Christian government for the existence of Boko Haram. So with that as the context it's easier to understand that Obama and Hillary have resisted doing anything about Boko Haram because they believed that its root cause was the oppression of Muslims by the Nigerian government. Don't forget, go back to 9/11. Why are there terrorists? Because of the United States, because of our policies in the Middle East, because of our support for Israel and also because of poverty and because of economic circumstances of no hope. Where else are young men in the Middle East gonna go? All this bohunk.

The ignoring of reality once again, that militant Islam is an ideology disguised as a religion. Militant Islam is an ideology. This Regime is not gonna look at it that way, shape or form. Remember, they never let go of their political agenda. The United States, the State Department after 9/11, within two months, that little forum, "What did we do to make them mad? Why do they hate us?" This is the blame America first crowd, and nothing has changed here. So this hashtag campaign, which actually started in Nigeria, just came along at a perfect time. I mean, it just fills the bill for the way the Regime wants to handle and hide behind it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not through. Mrs. Clinton. Hillary Clinton has been praised for eventually tweeting this condemnation of Boko Haram's kidnappings. Now, see, this is another measure of the phoniness. The hashtag starts in Nigeria. Mrs. Clinton, for two or three years at the State Department was asked to declare them officially a terrorist group.

"No way! Nope, nope, nope. Not gonna do it."

Again, the reason they don't think Boko Haram is a terrorist group because the Nigerian government is responsible for making them one. The trouble in Nigeria is not Boko Haram; it's the Christian government. That's Mrs. Clinton's view. That's Obama's view. But eventually she got on board with the hashtag and all this inertia here behind it.

She eventually got on board -- and when she did, as is the case with all leftists whenever they arrive, they are praised for getting on board, and she did. "She tweeted a condemnation of Boko Haram’s kidnappings."

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just found another good sound bite before we get back to the phones. Alan Dershowitz was on CNN last night, and the host... I mean, is there any wonder this network has 250,000 viewers? This is an incredible exchange. Bill Weir is the host. He's talking Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor, about the kidnapped Nigerian girls, and the CNN host asks Dershowitz:

"Hey, what if we all chipped in and bought them back?" That was his question. "What if we just gave these terrorists the money?" So Dershowitz had to explain to him, "Well, if you do that, they're just gonna keep doing it. If you pay 'em off, they'll keep doing it to get your money." The host said, "We don't have to do that because we got magic working. We got the first lady holding up a sign. With a use of force like that, don't worry. It'll be okay."

It's a very snarky comment; I love it. Listen to this...

WEIR: We don't know if there's any, you know, behind-the-scenes deals going, but what do you think? (snickering) Should we all chip in and buy these girls back and then go after the guys who took 'em?

DERSHOWITZ: That would be a very bad deal to negotiate and make a deal with them because they're talking about soft targets. They'll just kidnap 200, 300, 400 more people. If you negotiate a release, give them what they want, they're just gonna do it again and again and again -- and it's gonna be the beginning of a terrible, terrible cycle. When you have the first lady of the United States holding up a sign, obviously the pressures are enormous, and we all want to see the girls returned safely. But there's no guarantee they will be returned safely.

RUSH: "When you have the first lady of the United States holding up a sign, obviously the pressures [on the terrorists] are enormous..." (laughing) We don't need to buy them back. (laughing) So this guy said, "What if we all chip in and buy 'em back?" and then remember Don Lemon asked the former air transportation expert, "Could that Malaysian jet have been swallowed up by a black hole?"

CALLER: Well, thank you, Rush. I have to have at least one Rush hour a day.

RUSH: Is that enough?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: One a day, is that enough?

CALLER: No, I try to get three, but at least one Rush hour a day.

RUSH: I appreciate the effort.

CALLER: I want to let you know that I'm a grandma, and my husband bought me your book for Christmas so I could read it to my grandkids 'cause I read them all the intelligent books.

RUSH: That's music to my ears. That is exactly one of the many intentions with this book was to have people like you read it to your grandkids.

CALLER: I know.

RUSH: And then when they had questions for you, you'd be able to answer their questions and read the book together. That's great! Thank you so much for saying that.

CALLER: Oh, you're welcome. To hear from a voice of reason and to say, "Look, this is the way it is," is great. But the reason I called was to ask, "Doesn't Michelle just get airtime when Barack is in trouble?" I mean, I've been watching for years now -- too many -- and observed that she only gets to be brought out when something bad is going on in the administration. Otherwise, he lets her come out, #Michelle, and act like, "Oh, see! I still have a beautiful wife and we're just a normal family." But he brings her out at appropriate times like a trophy.

RUSH: Ummm. (sigh)

CALLER: Just pay attention and see. (giggles)

RUSH: See, I...

CALLER: It's an observance!

RUSH: I think that it's kind of Michelle deciding when she's gonna show up. I think she's the one that says, "Barack, I'm doing X," if she even tells him.

CALLER: (chuckling)

RUSH: I don't see Michelle as, you know, hidden away in the residence, only being brought out by Barack when he thinks it's necessary.

CALLER: (giggles) Well, we'll see as time goes on.

RUSH: I mean, you're right. She comes out when there are rough patches 'cause, you know, first ladies, they're all loved. Every first lady has always been loved. They tried to make the country hate Nancy Reagan, and they tried to make the country hate Laura Bush, and they tried to make the country hate Barbara Bush, but they failed. The first ladies are just automatically loved and respected.

CALLER: Well, the kids in my neck of the woods are throwing out their school lunches, so I don't know how well she is liked here.

RUSH: Yeah, but are they blaming Michelle for it? Do they think it's Michelle's menu that they're throwing out?

CALLER: Well, they say it is.

RUSH: Well. Well.

CALLER: She's the one who changed the school lunch menu all across the country.